


My World Building for Clone Culture

by lilyconrad



Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Clone Wars, Gen, Star Wars Clones - Freeform, clone culture, world building
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-22
Updated: 2017-05-22
Packaged: 2018-11-03 12:57:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10967724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilyconrad/pseuds/lilyconrad
Summary: A collection of things I've made up or added to regarding clone trooper culture from Star Wars. If you see something you like and would like to use in your own fic/art, please go ahead! I'd also love to see a link to your work, if you would like to share! I love reading about these boys. <3





	My World Building for Clone Culture

Here are the general categories below. (Please also let me know if any of these are canon to begin with, as I've written and read so much at this point it's entirely possible I mixed it up with mine!) 

  
1\. Superstitions Regarding Luck/Telling the Future

2\. Gestures to Ward off Evil or Bring Protection

3\. Views about Death and the Afterlife

4\. Socialization and Psychology

5\. Clone Slang and Language

 

**1\. Superstitions Regarding Luck/Telling the Future**

**-When you tear open the wrapper on a ration bar the meal or day before a battle, the way it tears tells you if you’ll live through that battle or not.**

_He finds himself watching Kenobi now, whenever he can, the same way other brothers watch the way dice land or the way their ration wrapper tears before a battle._ (Hope)

 

 **-All clones need a nickname for luck before their first engagement.** (I have a nagging feeling this might actually be from canon and I borrowed it? I might have? If not, here it is!)

_"That makes two of us," he said, sounding pleased. "Listen, Padawan, first things first. It's bad luck for a shinie to go out in the field without a nickname."_

_"That's what the clones say, right?"_

_"Yeah, and I agree. You never mess with luck.”_ (The World Undone)

 

**-Jango Fett is honored and referred to as "The First". It’s considered bad luck to say his name without adding, “All honor to the The First.”**

_Or maybe they were Jedi Padawans captured for experimentation during the Purge. Or, Rex’s personal favorite, they were karking Jango Fett himself, risen from the dead with one of them sporting Jango’s head and the other his body._ All honor to the First _, he added absentmindedly, sending another grenade over his shoulder before making a hard right._ (Broken)

 

**2\. Gestures to Ward off Evil or Bring Protection**

**-Two fingers traced along your firing arm in a quick, short brush from the back of the forearm to the back of the wrist to mimic the straight line of a bolt being fired. Done to ward off bad luck** **(keep your shots straight and accurate).**

 _The squad jogged past the hooded figures, splitting into two lines as they went around them. A few of the brothers made good-luck signs as they passed and the two adiik openly stared from the way their helmets swiveled, but the Twins did not move._ (Broken)

 

**-Another clone uses his thumb to draw a cross on your cheek. Done for good luck. One person can do one cross only, but a second person can add another on your other cheek to strengthen the luck further.**

_“You are not going to fight them!” Ahsoka repeated as Echo slapped Rex on the back and drew his thumb down and across Rex’s cheek in a good luck sign. “We’ll go together!”_

_“There is no way they know you’re with us or that you’re even alive, Ahsoka. We need to keep it that way. Let them think I’m the big fish here.”_

_[...]_

_She shook her head in resignation and drew the same charm on the other side of his face, love and fear in the gesture as Echo leaned against the door to push it open and keep watch down the dim hall that led further back into the complex. “Please be careful. We need you.”_ (Broken)

  
  
**3\. Views about Death and The Afterlife**

**-The clones see Death as an old witch who sits by her cookfire. Everyone comes to sit next to her and goes into her fire eventually.**

_Cursing and shooting as he ran, Rex felt fear, real fear, creeping along his bones and suddenly found himself thinking of the old, immortal witch Mandalorians blamed for death itself._ Come and sit by my fire/Come and feed it your bones/The fire takes everything, little child/Come and see what you owe _, the old children’s song went..._ (Broken)

 

**-A squad or smaller group will keep the helmet of the first man to die in their squad in one of their quarters or a common room and mark off future squad deaths on it. The first man to die is thought to stay behind and shepherd the souls of those who die in the future back to Kamino.**

**Before moving the helmet after new marks are added, it must be tapped the same number of times as the new marks to show respect and warn the potentially testy (and bad-luck bringing) newly dead that they are about to be moved. When new marks are added, the first man/shepherd is believed to have taken the previous souls back to Kamino and returned to keep watch over the new ones.**

_He ran his hand along the helmet left sitting in the middle of the room’s only table, an old bucket now bearing three new marks atop older ones running along the side of it, before he sat down and the other two followed suit._

_“She’s asleep,” he sighed as Fives tapped the helmet three times before carefully moving it aside to the end of the table._ (Broken)

 

**-Clones who die off-world go on one last march from the site of their death back to Kamino.**

_Tonight a thousand brothers march unseen into the skies, their spirits returning to the seas and storms of Kamino..._ (Hope)

 

**-Any place where a brave soldier has died, enemy or not, is a place that luck can be drawn from. Two taps on the left shoulder, the left being the side of the dead and the right the side of the living, show respect and call out a greeting to these ‘worthy dead’. These dead can be spoken to to ask for luck, help, or assistance, but should only be called the general title “honored one” and should never, ever be called by the names they bore while alive lest the soldier’s anger at dying manifest itself and come to the person calling it.**

_Appo crossed his right hand across his chest to give two subtle taps on his left shoulder as he passed by the massive stairway where he and two squads had taken down the Jedi Windu after Order 66 had come through. The gesture was one of respect for the worthy dead: the man had fought on longer than Appo and his men would have thought physically possible before finally falling to his knees and taking a blaster bolt to the head._

Walk with me, honored one, in my time of need _, he thought grimly to himself, the formal phrase bringing him a little comfort. There were no enemies in death, the brothers believed, only luck that could be drawn from the places where the strong of either side had fallen._ (Broken)

 

**-In very dire situations a clone may call on Jango Fett, called “The First” out of respect, and the worthy dead, called “the honored ones” in a specific, set phrase to ask for protection: “May the First walk on my left and the honored ones on my right.” The left side is normally considered the side of the dead, but Fett is held in god-like, mystical regard as the one who transcended death (by the creation of the clones) and therefore is the only one who can “walk on the left” by a clone’s side.**

_Rex took a deep, steadying breath, letting it out through the grate in his new helmet in a slow, controlled exhale and patted his blaster pistols at his sides, taking further reassurance from the weight of the rifle slung over his back._ May the First walk on my left and the honored ones on my right _, he found himself praying as they advanced slowly toward the heavy door and the two white-armored men standing guard there._ (Broken)

 

**-If a clone dies in battle but is brought back by the medics, it is considered a very special event. The belief is that the man who died on the field was weak, and the man who has returned is a new, stronger one. The new man must be "tested" in a ceremony that is a three-day living wake/party to celebrate his return. Every clone who is able must come and toast with him, the returned man allowed to take just a sip if need be depending on how many brothers are going to toast him.**

_He is completely unprepared for the three days of hard drinking and partying that follow, every single clone on the ship sharing a drink with him and celebrating his return from the dead in a raucous, living wake..._ ( _[Tumblr ficlet](https://writegowrite.tumblr.com/post/160836509379/msu82-writegowrite-writegowrite) _ about Obi-Wan after Rako Hardeen)

 

**4\. Socialization and Psychology**

**-Gently squeezing the back of a clone’s neck will instantly calm him a little, as it subconsciously reminds all of them of the headrests that helped hold them in place in liquid bassinets as infants.**

_After a few minutes, unnerved by Kenobi’s despair, Cody instinctively reaches out and touches the back of Kenobi’s neck. He slips his fingers under the back of Kenobi’s collars to rest his hand there, his palm solid and warm against the general’s skin. It’s something the brothers do for each other, something that calms them all, the sensation an unconscious echo of the headrests of the liquid cradles that held them as infants._ (Hope)

 

 **-Having so few personal possessions of their own, clones see borrowing anything as a serious sign of trust. If a clone is loaned something it will be returned pristine and possibly cleaner or in better shape than it was given to him in.** (This is another one I think I might have seen in canon first? If not, here it is!)

_“You know,” Obi-Wan says early one morning as the two sit alone atop a cliff and look through their binoculars over a dawn-streaked valley below, “I’m running out of datapads for you. The ones I have onboard, I mean.”_

_Cody grins, darting a look down and keying in coordinates for their scouts ahead, setting places he wants them to check out. “Not possible, as much as you read. You just tired of lending them to me?” he jokes. “What, did I scratch one?”_

_Obi-Wan smiles back, watching the little white silhouettes work their way across the valley floor. “No. I think they’re cleaner when I get them back than when I give them to you. I’m really running out of them."_ (Hope) 

 

**-Clones enjoy coming up with dirty jokes and[limericks](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8897521) since they have so much mind-numbing, boring downtime in transit and in between battles.**

 

**-Clones do not dream original dreams and relive experiences as dreams instead.**

_The brothers did not dream, as a rule: not a single one Rex had ever met could share an amusing recollection of a dream where he found himself standing naked in the middle of a morning assembly or recount a nightmare about something vague and monstrous chasing him through the dark._

_In the place of dreams many brothers had random memories rise up in the long, black stretch of sleep, recalled with such clarity any other sentient would call it a dream because the dreamer was unaware it was not real life while it was happening. Their makers were puzzled by the phenomenon but let it pass unaddressed, deciding in their documentation that since the clones could not dream for subconscious release of stress, their brains had instead forced memories into fulfilling that particular psychological role._ (Broken)

 

**-Clones treat their memory-dreams (see above) as portents and omens.**

_“Brother?” someone asked from above him, and he sat up, clutching at his chest._

_“Dream... bad dream...”_

_While their makers had written off the brothers’ odd recollection of memories during sleep as unimportant, the clones did not. They approached their dream-memories with the same reverence and belief others might give religious prophecies as they developed a blend of the Mandalorian culture they were taught and the new version they created, one filled with charms and luck and fortune in an attempt to offset the random cruelties of fate that were a soldier’s lot._

_“What about?” the same voice asked again quietly, and Rex placed it as Fives._

_“That day. The day we lost Cody and the generals,” he said as quietly as he could in between gasps._

_There was silence, and then the creak of the bunk as Fives climbed down from overhead, a large shadow leaning down over him to put both hands on his shoulders. They were warm, and soothing. “Have you had this dream before?” he whispered, as concerned as Rex was._

_“No. Never.”_

_“Should we move camp?”_

_“I… I don’t know.” Rex put his head in his hands, and then the door behind them swung open, startling them both. Fives turned to face it but left a hand on Rex’s shoulder, an anchor for Rex to focus on as he tried to calm himself._ (Broken)

 

**-Post Order-66, Commander Appo and the clones under him develop a superiority complex regarding the new human recruits now serving with them. Human soldiers are referred to as ‘adiik’ (Mandalorian for ‘child’ according to the[online Mando'a dictionary](http://mandoa.org/)) and treated as second-class by the clones. **

_[A new addition to Appo’s squad, a human, shows disbelief and worry about a mission they’re about to begin]_

_Commander Appo grinned under his helmet, amused, as the ship clattered along. The adiik, as the clones called the natural humans brought into the Imperial army after Empire Day, had been a necessary evil after the deaths of so many brothers in the last surges of the Clone Wars. But as the private nickname suggested, they would always be little children to the brothers no matter how many battles they fought in. Natural humans were always so easily frightened and distracted from missions, lacking the discipline and martial faith every brother was born with._ (Broken)

 

 **5\. Clone Slang/Language** (not strictly Mando’a, developed naturally among groups of clones)

 **-Alei da’han = mercy killing of a worthy enemy.** “Alei da’han” was the name of a mythical hero in old Mandalorian folktales known for his bravery and strength. After a lifetime of storied victories and glory, he was injured badly in a battle and his enemy, recognizing his worthiness, agreed to his plea to kill him rather than capture him and spare him the shame of living weak and useless afterward.

 _Fives thought about the ancient Mandalorian phrase, about the honor it implied: the mercy killing of a respected enemy when he was too injured to live with pride once the battle was over. “Alei da’han,” he repeated to Echo, who said nothing as he watched Rex disappear down the hallway._ (Broken)

 

**-Kaj = shit, hell**

_“You look like kaj, sir,”... ([Tumblr ficlet](https://writegowrite.tumblr.com/post/160836509379/msu82-writegowrite-writegowrite), _ Cody addressing Obi-Wan)

 

**-Haa’li = coward**

_I will not die like some spineless haa’li, Master!_ (Equinox, Anakin addressing Obi-Wan with slang he's picked up from his men)

 


End file.
